How did you feel about the Gulf War in 1991?

[Jed Dilligan]

Just curious...

[eleny]

1. against - protested

[EFerrari]

2. Against, protested. n/t

[bbinacan]

Supported. n/t

[Jed Dilligan]

15. Do you feel the same way now--that it was a good thing to do?

I'm not going to flame you, I'm just curious. It was such a defining moment for me and, I think, for the country.

[ikojo]

3. Against it and protested

and prayed that my brother came back from Iraq alive.

I went to DC with a group from St Louis to protest the war.

[Jed Dilligan]

4. I turned 17 in a peace camp--spent the whole war living outside.

[1awake]

5. a hard one to answer...

hmm.. well, I guess I was for the 91 war.. but was against our government greenlighting Iraq to invade in the first place. So in other words, Iraq shouldn't have invaded and needed to be removed.. but it was our fault to begin with.. I'm getting a headache.

[pitohui]

6. against but unable to protest

too busy myself being shot at in poppy bush's crack war that was taking place in cities near you in those days

lucky to be alive and actually still drop and roll whenever i think i hear gunfire!

[Downtown Hound]

7. I was 14, young, dumb, and the son of a hard core Republican

I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I watched with awe at what we Americans were capable of, how much "ass we could kick."

I shudder now when I think of those things. Later in life I learned about all the propaganda used to make us support that war, about how our tank shells were made of depleted uranium that irradiated an entire area when used en mass, and about how we slaughtered thousands of retreating Iraqi troops on the "highway of death, most of whom were just kids that never wanted to be in Kuwait and just wanted to go home.

So at the time I was for it. Now, I'm passionately against it.

[blonndee]

8. Too young and uninformed.

But I do remember that in art class, we were assigned to make a poster "supporting the troops." I used red, slightly unevenly torn strips of red to make stripes against the white posterboard background and carefully tore out large letters in blue: P-E-A-C-E. The posters were laminated and I kept it for a long time. I don't know what happened to it. I guess I've moved too many times to have kept up with it. :(

[tjwash]

9. That was when I deserted the center, and went hard, hard left from then on.

[EFerrari]

10. That was when they closed down our press, remember?

I remember my mom and I talking about all those yellow ribbons being set out for a situation that most people knew nothing about.

[high density]

11. All I remember is watching the green night vision footage on CNN with John Holliman

I was about 10.

[SmokingJacket]

12. I was against the war, but I remember feeling conflicted.

I thought Saddam was probably evil and how could we let him invade Kuwait, etc? But I was always against the war. It seemed like a theater piece for Bush I.

I was youngish then... so much yet to learn...

[Sukie]

13. Against it but too busy raising three young children while

their father was in Iraq flying blackhawk helicopters in the war, to protest it. Then, 14 years later, our son went to the next war. Both should not have happened.

[FiveGoodMen]

14. I was against it and lost friends over it, but couldn't convince anyone it was wrong.

[DemoTex]

16. I covered the war (with a Pentagon press pass) for an aviation news publication.

I usually sat between Katie Couric (then with the DC NBC affiliate) and Wolf Blitzer. We got to know one another fairly well. We were all against the war. Even Wolf.

SECDEF Dick Cheney often briefed us. He was a good friend of my right-wing sister, so I got to know him too.

The Cheneys and I crossed paths a few years later, in Dallas. We lived eight blocks apart. Most old DUers remember that I trained my dog, Sirius, to poop in Cheney's yard. We also crossed paths at the Highland Village Starbucks. I watched Cheney turn beet red while walking around and admiring my 1965 Porsche 356SC and seeing "Texas Democrat" and "Greenpeace" stickers on the back window.

[pansypoo53219]

17. i was duped by that faux witness on c-span.

but remember that april glaspie said . 'oh saddam, no problem if you wanna invade kuwait.' and knew the history of irangate. or was it iraq gate? reagangate. too young.

[bemildred]

18. Can I have mixed feelings?

Or do we have to have all or nothing?

[Jed Dilligan]

19. I put neutral and other; do we need another in-between category?

[bemildred]

23. Mixed feelings is another category.

The notion that wars are un-mixedly good or bad is in itself pernicious. Some wars are justified, but all wars are bad. Only fools celebrate wars.

[Jed Dilligan]

24. I think "supported" is equivalent to "thought it was justified."

I would assume that no one on DU celebrates the negative aspects of war.

[bemildred]

25. I disagree. nt

[Jed Dilligan]

26. Why?

[bemildred]

27. Because it's not that simple.

When I am objecting to the binary "for or against", it makes perfect sense to reject both. There were aspects of it that I thought, in context, were justified. There were aspects of what happened that I thought were war crimes. Why should I simplify that down to suit you?

[Jed Dilligan]

30. Well, I see this as a dodge.

The public wouldn't put up with it in a candidate, and I don't see why I should accept it from you. If you were in Congress then, how would you have voted on the resolution? Yes, no, or abstain? It actually IS that simple.

[bemildred]

31. You asked for our views. You have mine.

If you don't want to accept it, that's your problem. I'm not running for anything. Personally, I think you ought to be a little more grateful that I took the time, but I won't make that mistake again.

[Jed Dilligan]

33. All I'm getting from you

is that you admit there were horrible effects but you thought all in all that going into that war was the right decision at the time. Or was it the wrong decision? That's the only answer I'm looking for. Surprising that you aren't running for anything--you sound like a politician!

[bemildred]

35. I don't see any reason to think that more "explaining" would make it any clearer to you.

You think it's a "yes or no" question. I think it is not, in fact I think that is a very dumbed down way to look at it, so I think that I can say that I do not support your question.

[Jed Dilligan]

36. I think you were a war supporter and you don't want to say it,

which is odd because no one is getting flamed for supporting the war in this thread.

[bemildred]

37. Think what you like.

It's clear enough that what I SAY doesn't matter to you, so there is little point for me in going on with this "conversation".

[Jed Dilligan]

39. It is possible to write and yet deliver no substantial content.

The fact that you type words does not mean you have said anything at all.

[bemildred]

40. Indeed, it's clear this has been a waste of time.

Nothing whatsoever delivered, that's clear.

[Elidor]

20. As the war began, the story behind it unraveled

At first I was unaware we had encouraged Saddam's invasion. Suddenly the whole thing stunk very badly. Within a day or two of it starting, I knew the whole thing was bullshit.

But I had just been made homeless the day the war started. The night it started, I visited my sister briefly and saw the TV footage of the bombs. Then I left and slept in my car and listened intermittently to the radio broadcasts. That night was very, very surreal for me, listening to the explosions there in the dark, cold and uncomfortable, as the country got its war on.

At five the next morning, I headed downtown to the shelters.

[Beregond2]

21. I happened to be in DC at the time, and happily joined in the protests.

[Initech]

22. I was 11 at the time - and still hated Bush!

[Danmel]

28. My first child was born the week the Gulf War broke out

I came home from the hospital and sat in bed watching the scuds fall over Tel Aviv and watching Saddam intentionally flood waters with oil and looked at the dying wildlife and dying people and was quite the hormonal post partum mess.

I went back to work five months later, the day there was a ticker tape parade for returning troops in lower Manhattan.

It was all just kind of surreal to me, having my first child and watching another war.

[TahitiNut]

29. That was such an obvious set-up -- wrong-footing Saddam because he "didn't know his place."

Saddam was a compliant surrogate for the global energy oligarchy, a "colonial governor" doing their bidding. Then he got "uppity."
:puke:

[Jed Dilligan]

32. I just saw it as a big ad for weapons

Selling the fantasy that military power can solve problems at little cost in "deserving" human lives. We are still suffering under the spell of that marketing campaign.

[Solon]

34. Too young at the time, but read about it later and realized it was another war based on lies...

a set up.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. I was against it, but I was in Japan with a group of students for the whole thing

:shrug:

[Tutankhamun]

41. I was against it and remember writing an essay in college

Freshman English against it. I got an "A" on the essay but I didn't really know much about the war and, despite the good grade, I thought my essay probably wasn't very strong. I decided my professor probably didn't like the war either and the grade was because she shared my frustration. Or maybe she was high.

[dailykoff]

42. Protested vigorously.

Obvious scam, backed by the same media ringers as the current one.

[Vidar]

43. Saddam was set up to take the fall for being a less-than-loyal CIA stooge.

[LynnTheDem]

44. And poll how many Americans have ever heard of the Basra Highway Massacre.

The war crimes committed by the US and UK in that war were horrific, and still to this day most Americans don't have a single clue about any of it.

Most aren't aware that ONE LIE by the very same MFing propaganda firm George W. bUsh used for his illegal unprovoked war based on lies spread that "incubator babies" lie around...and the vote to go to war passed because of that lie...by 2 votes.

Most aren't aware of the war crime committed by the US of burying troops alive.

The Basra Highway Massacre...that was insanity, pure insanity. My Lai all over again...but far worse. The UK parliament even commented in-session about the massive war crime that was...yet most Americans don't have a clue about any of it.

THAT is why "they" hate us, America. It ain't our "freedoms" (we're not even in the top 10 for that); it's the slaughtering done in our names and we don't even fucking bother to learn about it.

[Jed Dilligan]

45. After they killed the 300 civilians in Basra, I wore all black to class

This girl said, "Oh no, are you one of those anti-Valentine's Day people?"

It's no coincidence that we gave Basra to the Brits this time around.

[Jed Dilligan]

46. Kick for the late night

[Toucano]

47. I had sex under a tree that had a yellow 'troops' ribbon tied around it

on an unnamed southern university in the wee hours of the morning.

This was after a protest, of course. Work comes first!

Funny what we remember when our brains are jogged, isn't it?

[Jed Dilligan]

52. Some of my first and most memorable experiences of you-know-what

were in that peace camp.

:blush:

[Diclotican]

48. I was in High School when the first Iraq war happened.

Jed Dilligan

I was in high School in 1991. Guess 7 grade.. And I had no specially feeling about it I guess... Even that I in my notebook wrote "World War 3?" under a picture of an f117 Nighthawk.. I still have that notebook somewhere... My foster parents was against it I guess. Even that they tried very hard to shelter both me and my brother from the news, some of it was coming our way too.. In this days we had one channel NRK1 and it was far more easy to control the information then today, when you have a dusin of so news channels alone.. We had just one channel to 1994 when a new commercial channel was opened, TV2 And a whole new age was coming to us...
I remember very vell that they one day say, when the news was coming about the war.. WAR is no video game, people is been killed by this bombs.. You remember that!.. My foster father was maybe more afraid than he ever was given sigh on I guess... Our King Olav V who died in 1991 on the eve of the first Iraq War, was very afraid of what would happend... And he should know it better than everyone Else.. He had some good "inside" information about what happened with the british intelligence agency. And the British Royal House.. After all, Queen Elizabeth 2 and Olav V was family, and family speak when problems arise.. Even "of the books":..
If I had been at age in 1991, I would very sure have been against the war.. In 1991 i was a rather naive, young kid, who had not so much clue of the most of the world... Today I am little older, even that I still have some problems with what happened in the world.. I try hard to get a grasp of things....

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language

[Jed Dilligan]

50. Thanks for your perspective.

I was 16 going on 17 when it began but already at university. I had a very anti-war view instilled in me by my parents.

[Diclotican]

56. Jed Dilligan

Jed Dilligan

I guess I got my anti-war view instilled by my own parents too.. Even that they never exactly was given some sigh of how I should think.. But I do remember that gun toys was something that was never popular home.. So I guess it was clear from a very young age that weapon never solve things.. I remember in 1 grade, I guess it was before Christmas or something like that, and it was a carnival at school.. The boys would go as cowboys with the guns and the lot.. I was not allowed to go with the gun stuff, and was explained very clear, that a cowboy very seldom used his gun, and that it was far better that I was not playing with gun.. I find it little weird. But as an adult I am in totally agreement with that today.. And if I ever got guns, I would say I would give the advice to not use weapon, even if was a toy.. Weapon are no toy what so ever...

When I was at age 18,and the conscript army was the next thing, I was seeking something called "civilian service" That means that I had to work in some place instead of going into the army. I was in a kindergarten and in a School the 16 months the "army duty" was on. And I have to say, it was fun to work in the school. Even the kindergarten could be fun. Somehow the kids at school have an aye for the world I never believed them to have.. But I served in some way I liked better, than to walk around with weapons.. As an Pacifist it is pretty lam to walk around with weapons.. Can't understand why folks want to do that... Maybe something wrong with myself?..

I have also an family who have experienced the war.. Both my grandfathers was in some way involved against the german couping of Norway between 1940-1945. And my foster father was more directly involved.. He was 16 when the war started. And was not coming home to Norway before he was over 20 year old.. And I guess he had the Post traumatic Stress disorder for more than 60 year. 64 year to be correct.. He had some times with nightmare and the lot, and yes he was telling some stories from the war, Even that I guess he never told the cold fact as the war was... But he remembered the war for ever my old foster father...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language

[MrSlayer]

49. I supported it.

Of course, I was also voting Republican at the time, not knowing any better.

[Jed Dilligan]

51. Good for you for being honest.

I applaud that. I'm interested to know what processes led you to rethink the war (or if you still think it was in balance a good idea). No flames--that was a long time ago, and I the last thing I'm trying to do here is repeat the 60s-90s culture wars as farce.

[MrSlayer]

58. Well learning the truth helped a lot.

The slide drilling, the nod from Bush to Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait and so on. It just took me a while to become politically aware.

So in retrospect it was completely wrong to support that war and it was equally wrong to support Republicans, I just didn't know any better at the time nor did I really care. Once I figured out that everything I was taught politically was the absolute opposite of my personal values and feelings I became the (mostly) flaming Liberal I am today, much to the chagrin of most of my family.

[youthere]

53. Other-

Opposed the war, but since my husband was in the Marine Corps at the time, we didn't have much of a choice about our role in the matter. He was sent to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield, then into Kuwait for Desert Storm, while I "waited it out" on Camp Pendleton for 13 months.

[Jed Dilligan]

54. Must have sucked.

At least for the Storm part I was waiting with you, wrapped up in a blanket and banging that drum 24/7.

[youthere]

55. It SO sucked. Big time sucked.

[ContinentalOp]

57. I was against it but didn't really do anything since I was a 14 yr old high school student.

Everyone else seemed really into it at the time though.